A Year and a Half of Blogging in Salem

I just realized that I started this, my very first blog, 1 1/2 years ago. A year and a half and 122 posts later I wonder what I have learned about blogging. How has it affected my life? What are my views on blogging now?

I started this blog to learn about blogging and that has definitely happened. I had no idea how blogging would change my life. Okay, I know that sounds corny. And it really hasn't changed all that much. My family is still my family, although now when they haven't seen me for awhile they can check my blog to see what's keeping me busy. My job is still the same although I now use blogging with my students on a daily basis to teach writing literacy skills. My friends are still the same, except for the great new group of blogging friends that I have happy hour with on a weekly basis. My home is still the same except now I don't have TV because I spend most of my allotted time for TV dramas online reading dramatic blogs. I'm still working on my Master's, but since I got interested in blogging I decided to do a degree in Information Technology.

Really, blogging has barely touched my life.

I thought blogging would be a fun little summer project that would give me the info I needed to teach it to my students. What I didn't realize is that blogging is a community like any other. You can either be actively involved in the community, or you can stand on the sidelines. Being involved means creating and regularly updating a blog that has meaning to you and others. It means creating content that will give your readers information, food for thought, or just plain entertain them. It means that you will have some influence, however minor, in the path that your blogging community takes as it morphs with time.

Standing on the sidelines might not sound important, but in blogging it means everything. No blogger wants to fling their words out into the world and just to have them sit there...unread. It's a fate worse than death. The point of blogging is communication. Every blogger wants readers. And ultimately, comments. Which is where the "sidelines" gets a little complicated. As a reader, you can comment and get involved in the blogging world, without ever having a blog of your own. It becomes a conversation among a group of people that care about the same things. And even in our digital, technologized (Yes, I just made that up. I'm a blogger. I can do that if I want!) world, what we all really want is to connect with other human beings.

Blogging is just another way to connect with people outside your normal environment. Blogging is like the Elks Club of the 21st century.